Day Two: A month of poetry for Brighid

Seeking Imbas

Against the cold I lay in bed awake

A mantle of darkness hanging over me

In emulation of old Eire’s filidh

Sequestered in a stone sarcophagus

Where waiting for a fire in the head

They’d sit and soak in water to the nose.

A boy steps in, his cheeks still round with youth.

His heart of passion holds his fire there,

Interred in two-fold dwelling of the dead.

A wrinkled man steps out, his trials carved

Into the features of his face and hands.

Inside and out transformed, still full of flame.

The fire in his eyes bespeaks the new song of his soul;

A song that will define him as a man,

And more than just a man; a man of art.

His own, no other’s, gifted from the gods—

A flame that burns in water, spreading forth

To fill up all his being, every vein,

Dwelling in body, mind, and his spirit;

That head which is the chamber of the soul.

His lines will fade and make him new again,

To be a man with his whole life laid out,

To do with and to make of what he can

Until his wrinkles find him once again

And mark him as a man who has known life.

It is this transformation that I seek,

But lacking a sarcophagus of stone

Or any means to soak until such time

As difficulty, hunger, and the strain

Bring on such visions and stir up such fire

That poetry streams from my fevered brain

And I return from past that land of death;

Until such time as I can do such deeds

I do my best to follow in their wake;

In dark of night, enclosed in my own space,

In semblance of sarcophagi I lay

As sleep draws near, I fill with images

And ride my inspiration into dreams.